VirtualBox is a virtual PC emulator like VMware. It is in constant development and new features are implemented all the time. e.g. version 2.2 introduced OpenGL 3D acceleration support for Linux and Solaris guests. It has a Qt GUI interface, as well as headless and SDL command line tools for managing and running virtual machines. It includes guest additions for some guest operating systems, which integrate functions of the guest and host systems, including sharing files, the clipboard, video acceleration and a “seamless” window integration mode.

In order to use the graphical interface, based on Qt (VirtualBox command), you will also need to install the qt4 package. This is not required for the simpler SDL-only GUI (VBoxSDL command) nor for the VBoxHeadless command.

Hosts running a custom kernel

VirtualBox works fine with custom kernels such as Linux-ckwithout the need to keep any of the official Arch kernel packages on the system. As these official kernel packages are dependencies of virtualbox-host-modules, if you want to prevent pacman from installing these unneeded packages, please install the virtualbox-host-dkms package instead. The latter comes bundled with the source of the virtualbox kernel modules that will be used to generate these modules for your kernel. See FS#26721 for further explanations.

Once virtualbox-host-dkms is installed, simply generate the kernel modules for your custom kernel by running:

To load/compile the virtualbox module automatically at startup you can enable dkms.service:

# systemctl enable dkms.service

Automatic re-compilation of the virtualbox host modules with every update of any kernel

This is possible thanks to vboxhost-hookAUR from the AUR. In vboxhost-hook, the 'automatic re-compilation' functionality is done by a vboxhost hook on mkinitcpio after forcing to update the linux-headers package. You will need to add 'vboxhost' to the HOOKS array in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf, as well as 'linux-headers' and your custom kernel(s) headers to the SyncFirst array in /etc/pacman.conf for this to work.

Warning: The SyncFirst option is no longer available as of pacman 4.1. Use

# pacman -Sy linux-headers && pacman -Su

instead to manually cause linux-headers to be updated first. See This explanation.

The hook will call the dkms command to update the virtualbox host modules for the version of your new kernel.

Note: If you are using this functionality it's important to look at the installation process of the linux (or any other kernel) package. vboxhost hook will tell you if anything goes wrong.

Setup

Add usernames to the vboxusers group

Add the desired usernames to the vboxusersgroup. Everything may work fine without this step but shared folders and possibly some other optional stuffs require it to work. The new group does not automatically apply to existing sessions; the user has to log in again or start a new environment with a command like newgrp or sudo -u $USER -s.

# gpasswd -a $USER vboxusers

Loading Kernel Modules

VirtualBox running on Linux uses its own kernel modules, including a mandatory module named vboxdrv, which must be loaded before virtual machines can run. It can be automatically loaded when ArchLinux starts up, or it can be loaded manually when necessary.

To load the module manually:

# modprobe vboxdrv

To load the VirtualBox driver at startup, create a *.conf file (e.g. virtualbox.conf) in /etc/modules-load.d that contains all modules that should be loaded:

/etc/modules-load.d/virtualbox.conf

vboxdrv

Note: In order to avoid no such file or directory error when loading vboxdrv, you may need to update the kernel modules db with depmod -a.

To start the VirtualBox graphical manager:

$ VirtualBox

To ensure full functionality of bridged networking, ensure that the vboxnetadp, vboxnetflt and vboxpcikernel modules are loaded as well as the net-tools package.

Guest additions disc

The virtualbox package also suggests installing virtualbox-guest-iso on the ArchLinux host running VirtualBox. It is a disc image that can be used to install the guest additions onto guest systems. Make it available to the running guest by going to Devices and clicking Install Guest Additions... Host+D, then run the guest additions installation from inside the guest.

Booting a live disc

Click the New button to create a new virtual environment. Name it appropriately and select Operating System type and version. Select base memory size (note: most operating systems will need at least 512 MB to function properly). Create a new hard disk image (a hard disk image is a file that will contain the operating system's filesystem and files).

When the new image has been created, click Settings, then CD/DVD-ROM, check Mount CD/DVD Drive then select an ISO image.

Starting virtual machines with a service

Advanced setup

Arch Linux as a guest in a Virtual Machine

Installing Arch under VirtualBox is straightforward, and additions should be installed through pacman (following the instructions below), and not through the "Install Guest Additions" menu item in VirtualBox on your host machine, nor from a mounted ISO image.

Automatic re-compilation of the VirtualBox guest modules with every update of any kernel

This is possible thanks to vboxguest-hookAUR from the AUR. In vboxguest-hook, the 'automatic re-compilation' functionality is done by a vboxguest hook on mkinitcpio after forcing to update the linux-headers package. You will need to add vboxguest to the HOOKS array in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf. You may need to manually recreate the initramfs after an upgrade of the linux-headers package.

The hook will call the dkms command to update the VirtualBox guest modules for the version of your new kernel.

Note: If you are using this functionality, it is important to look at the installation process of the linux (or any other kernel) package. vboxguest hook will tell you if anything goes wrong.

Start the sharing services

After installing virtualbox-guest-utils above, you should start VBoxClient-all to start services for sharing the clipboard, resizing the screen, etc.

If you are running something that launches /etc/xdg/autostart/vboxclient.desktop, such as GNOME or KDE, then nothing needs to be done.

If you use .xinitrc to launch things instead, you must add the following to your .xinitrc before launching your WM.

Using USB webcam / microphone

Make sure the virtual machine is not running and your webcam / microphone is not being used.

Bring up the main VirtualBox window and go to settings for Arch machine. Go to USB section.

Make sure "Enable USB Controller" is selected. Also make sure that "Enable USB 2.0 (EHCI) Controller" is selected too.

Click the "Add filter from device" button (the cable with the '+' icon).

Select your USB webcam/microphone device from the list.

Now click OK and start your VM.

Using Arch under Virtualbox EFI mode

My experience with this configuration was pretty terrible, but it does work.

UPD. Using efibootmgr has the same effect as using VirtualBox boot menu (see the note below): settings disappear after VM shutdown. First, efibootmgr does *not* work. It will appear to work, but all changes it makes appear to be overwritten on reboot. After performing a standard UEFI/GPT installation, reboot and you should get dumped to the EFI shell. Type exit and you will get a menu. Select the Boot Management Manager, Boot Options, Add Boot Option. Use the file browser to find the grub efi file and select it. Add a label if you want. Afterwards, select Change Boot Order from the menu, use arrow keys to select your Arch option, and + to move it up to the top. GRUB should boot by default now.

You also need run this daemon in order to use auto-mounting feature of shared folders that are mentioned above.

Enable shared folders

Shared folders are managed via the VirtualBox program on the host. They may be added, auto-mounted and made read-only from there.

If automounting is enabled, and the vboxservice is enabled, creating a shared folder from the VirtualBox program on the host will mount that folder in /media/sf_SHAREDFOLDERNAME on the guest. To have that folder created on the Arch Guest, after the Guest Additions have been installed, you need to add your username to the vboxsf group.

# groupadd vboxsf
# gpasswd -a $USER vboxsf

Note: For automounting to work, you have to enable the vboxservice service.

If you want a shared folder (e.g /media/sd_Dropbox) to be symlinked to another folder in your home directory for easy access, you can type on the guest:

$ ln -s /media/sf_Dropbox/* ~/dropbox

The VBoxLinuxAdditions.run script provided in the Guest Additions iso does this for you, however, Arch does not recommend using it.

To prevent startup problems when you're using systemd, you should add comment=systemd.automount to your /etc/fstab. This way, they are mounted only when you access those mount points and not during startup. Otherwise your system might become unusable after a kernel upgrade (if you install your guest additions manually).

Troubleshooting

modprobe Exec format error

VBOX_E_INVALID_OBJECT_STATE (0x80BB0007)

This can occur if a VM is exited ungracefully. The solution to unlock the VM is trivial:

VBoxManage controlvm nArch poweroff

USB subsystem is not working on the host or guest

Sometimes the USB subsystem is not auto-detected resulting in an error (eg: Could not load the Host USB Proxy service: VERR_NOT_FOUND) or in a not visible USB drive on the host, even when the user is in the vboxusers group. See this topic [1] for details.

USB subsystem will work if you add

VBOX_USB=usbfs

to ~/.bashrc and reboot your system or open a new bash instance.

Also make sure that your user is a member of the storage group.

Failed to create the host-only network interface

To be able to create a Host-Only Network Adapter or a Bridged Network Adapter the kernel modules vboxnetadp and vboxnetflt need to be loaded, you also need to make sure the net-tools package is installed. It's possible to load these kernel modules manually with

# modprobe -a vboxnetadp vboxnetflt

To load them automatically at boot, add a new line for each module to /etc/modules-load.d/virtualbox.conf:

vboxdrv
vboxnetadp
vboxnetflt

Note: These used to be added to the MODULES array in /etc/rc.conf. This is now deprecated.

WinXP: Bit-depth cannot be greater than 16

If you are running at 16-bit color depth, then the icons may appear fuzzy/choppy. However, upon attempting to change the color depth to a higher level, the system may restrict you to a lower resolution or simply not enable you to change the depth at all. To fix this, run regedit add the following key to the Virtual Windows XP registry:

Copy&Paste not working on Arch Linux Guest

Since updating virtualbox-guest-additions to version 4.2.0-2 copy&paste from Host OS to Arch Linux Guest stopped working. It seems to be due to VBoxClient-all requiring root access. In previous versions adding VBoxClient-all & to ~/.xinitrc was sufficient to make copy&paste work. Update ~/.xinitrc to match sudo VBoxClient-all & and add the line , NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/VBoxClient-all to your username in the sudoers file and restart X. It should all work again. The line in the sudoers file should look similar to this:

# Allow sudo for user 'you' and let him run VBoxClient-all without requiring a password
you ALL = PASSWD: ALL, NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/VBoxClient-all

Note: Use visudo to edit the sudoers file. This will check for syntax errors when saving.

Abort on resume

System Images in Btrfs

In 2010 there were reports that OS disk images would not start if they were attached via a virtual SATA device. It was reportedly fixed, and seemed to be. But as of around March 2013, that particular bug report has been repoened. This can be fixed by enabling the use of the host I/O cache, which is disabled by default with virtual SATA interfaces.

vagrant up Issue

With the latest version of Virtualbox(4.2.14-1) the vagrant up command end up in a failure:

According to the Vagrant creator on Twitter, this is a VirtualBox bug. On 2013-06-25, he said that they fixed the bug in SVN, and he's waiting on a release. Also, I can confirm that this is a multi-platform issue, 4.2.14 was broken for me on Win7.

This issue has been solved inside the virtualbox release virtualbox-4.2.16-1

Access to shared folders hangs

Access to a shared folder on the host from a guest running 3.11 kernel can hang. There is a fix upstream, but it has not yet (as of 26 Sept 2013) made its way to the guest additions package. Here's the fix: